I’ve needed a way to import some images into Textpattern, especially when adding more than one image the textpattern admin interface is not the best. So i found a plugin called aba_import_image, but i ran in some problems regarding double imports, and it really wasn’t so nice to use, meaning it had no interface at all. So i took it apart, reassembled it, added some stuff, and here we go.

Behold fpx_image_import.txt. This plugin does the same as aba_import_image, but you can select which files you want to import, and the imported files are not deleted anymore since this isn’t necessary. The list of files and folders is displayed below the image list in the textpattern admin interface. By selecting the “import” checkbox you can select which one you want to import. Please note that the plugin does not check (and in fact is completely unable to) if an image was already imported, so be careful when importing. If you select a folder, all the files in the folder are imported to a category with the name of the folder. If this category does not exist, it will be created.

I also added a preferences page for the settings which control the import of the images, the creation of the thumbnails, and so on. You can find the preference page in a new tab called “image import” under the “extensions” tab. This solution isn’t optimal, since you don’t see the settings when importing and can’t change them on the same page, but the inner workings of textpattern and its plugins prevented a better solution. In the following screenshot you can see the preferences page.

Please note that this is just a quick hack, i only added the display and selection of files and folders under the image tab, and the preferences. The complete image import and thumbnail creation is as it was in aba_import_image. So i hope everything there works
ok :-)

I’ve tested this plugin with Textpattern 4.0.3 and 4.0.2, and it worked for me.